


So We're Doing This

by sharivan



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, Mage Rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-09-17 08:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9313919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharivan/pseuds/sharivan
Summary: Assistant professor Marian Hawke does not enjoy her time on the faculty senate.





	1. Chapter 1

“Up next, a report from the president of student senate.”

Fifteen minutes of attention was Hawke’s limit. Past time to move on to the blatant inattention portion of the meeting, really. If her chair creaked alarmingly as she reached for the snacks in her bag, it was practically a gift to her fellow senators, drowning out a few seconds of the earnest new speaker.

“ _Hawke_ ,” the man beside her whispered before she even had a chance to offer him a handful of trail mix. “Pretend to be an adult for once.”

“Please, Carver, I am not the enfant terrible at this table.” Perhaps the snacks would mollify him? No, safer to keep them out of his reach.

“Just the terrible one?” Carver said, just as though he’d finally developed a sense of humor. Years of exposure revealing a change at last? Her charming company triggering an epigenetic response? Or, ugh, maybe her standards were finally slipping.

Regardless, she crunched quietly on peanuts and m&ms as the reports continued. Staff senate. Tuition increases. Renaming a grad program.

Was that an urgent email on her phone? Yes! She certainly couldn’t let a student wallow in certainty about the field work dates for Wildlife of the Free Marches. Not when copying and pasting the relevant parts of the syllabus would distract her for at least a few minutes.

“Pay attention.” Carver’s tablet showed the meeting agenda and _notes,_ how disgusting. 

“Yeah, look at how upset the blond in front is getting, you don’t want to miss this.”

The man in question was certainly fidgeting a lot.

“Oh yeah?”

“Don’t you get the faculty listserv?” the dwarf asked.

Hawke was personally insulted this stranger thought she might not look forward to the monthly discussion about whether bicycles should be allowed on campus sidewalks. 

“Of course,” she told him.

“That’s Anders. Sent out those terrible political cartoons? And he’s just as loudmouthed in person.”

“Yes, Senator Fell?” the chair asked with the tone of a woman regretting everything that had brought her to that point.

It was the first time all afternoon that Hawke didn’t share the sentiment. Carver, meanwhile, was entirely too busy looking sidelong at Hawke and her new friend to focus properly.

“It will come as no surprise to the other returning senators that I have some questions about the university’s budget priorities. Could you explain, VP Durham, why ten million dollars of public money appears to be going to the Templar training program?”

While the discussion of exactly where the money originated and whether the Templars were ultimately a fundraising opportunity or not was a little over Hawke’s head, she certainly picked up on VP Durham’s annoyance.

“Just wait til we get a bill about mage students. He’ll go on for half an hour straight if no one remembers how to invoke parliamentary rules.”

“I am _so glad_ to have met you, Mr…?”

“Varric Tethras. And you?”

“Marian Hawke. Now, who else is worth keeping an eye on?”

When they finally left the meeting an hour later, Hawke told Carver that faculty senate might have some redeeming features after all. He was oddly unmoved by the concession.

***

Later in the week Hawke ate what an ungenerous observer might have considered more than her rightful share of spinach dip and told her dinner companions, “You know that the committee appointment group only meets once a term? Carver, I think we were duped.”

“Doesn’t the committee appointment group do work outside their meetings, though?” Merrill asked earnestly.

“Merrill, sweetheart! You wouldn’t say such things if you spent two and a half hours in the most pointless meeting imaginable and looked forward to the same thing next month.”

“She spent the whole time on her phone or trading campus gossip with her new best friend,” Carver told Merrill.

“And I did it all quietly while listening to arguments about whether to rename some degree program in engineering, like the team player that I am.”

“So avoid faculty senate, got it,” Merrill said. “Thank you for letting me know.”

“Just so long as our suffering can save you, Merrill, that’s thanks enough,” Hawke assured her. “Though I wouldn’t say no to another drink.”

“Hawke--” Carver began.

“That’s okay.” Merrill patted his arm. “It’s Carver’s round anyway.”

***

Despite Carver’s claims, Hawke spent plenty of time working. In her office in zoology sometimes, distinguished from those on either side by the way none of the cartoons on her door had yellowed yet. In her apartment, which was barely fit for human habitation but conveniently close to campus. And yes, when she was really lucky, in the field. Just Hawke and a dragon breeding ground and a couple of grad students to keep from disturbing or being eaten by dragons.

“Anything bigger than drakes here?” Stacia asked on the way to the Bone Pit. (A name, Hawke insisted, which was perfectly reasonable for a dragon nesting site given the inevitable prey corpses and in no way a sign that their own bones would one day lie there, unless they were very careless indeed.)

“Not that I’ve ever seen, but we could get lucky!”

It was a beautiful day in the Free Marches right up until Aaron glanced up from his diagram of bone-nest distribution and said “oh shit” just loud enough for Hawke to hear.

They were not lucky enough to come across a true dragon. Instead a pack of drakes interrupted them as they charted the location of a long-abandoned nest.

“...Fuck.” A moment later Hawke was on her feet, staff in hand. “We’re leaving now! Stay behind me.”

Drakes hissing at the edge of a crackling blue barrier, they left the mine.

“So,” Stacia said once they were safely in Hawke’s car, “you’re a mage?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Hawke told her. “That’s my dragon-repelling walking stick. Like bear spray, but … a stick.”

“... uh huh,” Aaron agreed.

“ _That said_ , if you ever have any questions about magic and its theoretical advantages in field work, you know where my office is.”

***

“You said _what_?” Carver shrieked at the end of Hawke’s amusing story about recent field work.

She gulped her gin and tonic, definitely not to buy time, just to see if Carver would turn any redder. He didn’t disappoint.

“I didn’t say anything damning. _And_ I didn’t let anyone get eaten so really it was a pretty successful day. A learning experience, even.”

“Hawke, come on. Don’t be an idiot. You can’t go around daring people to figure out you’re a mage.”

This was a reasonable point. She had, in fact, done a pretty good job hiding that for a fairly long time - since they’d come to Kirkwall, certainly.

“Would ‘heartless researcher leaves student as sacrifice in the Bone Pit’ be an improvement?”

“Just...be more careful. Maker, Hawke.”

***

Hawke’s second faculty senate meeting starts off nearly as boring as the first. Varric at least has interesting stories to share before the meeting starts in earnest. “No shit, there I was when Rivaini stormed in and started fighting with the department head…”

The litany of roll call and committee reports send Hawke back to her phone. She half-listened to the first resolution on the agenda, a recommendation to strengthen campus mental health resources after a recent suicide.

“Given their response to mage students in crisis, I’m not convinced this is a good use of resources.” It’s the blond, of course. Anders? Hawke had been a bit distracted lately, deleting most listserv emails unread. It seems the last month had left him as vocal as ever.

“What’s he talking about?” she asked quietly.

“Dunno.”

“Could you elaborate, Senator Fell?” the chair asked.

“If the counseling center refuses to support all students, why should they receive more funding? Suspending mage students seeking help as too dangerous to remain on campus and referring them to the Templars for counseling before they can return is not acceptable.”

“If a student is a danger to themself - and more to the point, to others - would you have them remain on campus instead of focusing on their recovery?”

“Senator Todd, please wait to be acknowledged before taking the floor.” Aveline’s face stayed relaxed as she spoke. Resigned to what will follow, maybe. 

“Yes, Madame Chair.”

The rest of the room was mostly quiet as Anders and Fenris began their discussion, barely waiting for acknowledgement from the chair before speaking. Better to let them establish the scope of the matter and jump in later to work out the details.

“If every mage who shows up is judged a danger and no one else is, I wonder at their methods!”

“It might be inconvenient for you, Anders, but mages can be genuinely dangerous. If one loses control -”

Hawke had expected to enjoy the full-on fights of senate meetings. They were the reward for the tedium of the rest of the meeting. This particular argument was not nearly as entertaining as she’d hoped.

“Enough,” Aveline interrupted. “Your concerns are noted, but we can hardly give this the attention it deserves tonight. I will invite representatives from the Chantry and the Templars to discuss their policies at our next meeting.”

Hawke slipped out before the session was formally adjourned.


	2. Chapter 2

The days that followed were heavy. Even the undergrads, whose version of university politics hardly ever overlapped with staff’s, were on edge. They whispered in twos and threes, paying even less attention to Hawke’s lectures than usual. Hawke’s own distraction certainly couldn’t explain all of the change.

She couldn’t manage much passion for population ecology discussions when Kirkwall University was crumbling. Like a poorly built nest, the mud long gone brittle, the eggs inside about to roll and smash.

She stopped by Merrill’s run-down office on the third floor of Alienage. “What is _happening_?” Hawke asked, shutting the door between them and any coworkers desperate for gossip that wouldn’t incriminate them.

“Everyone’s given up on appearances,” Merrill said. “Hiding doesn’t matter anymore.”

“But Andraste’s tits, Merrill, even Ferelden didn’t openly throw kids in Kinlock Hold for, what, asking somebody about academic anxiety?” They stood close together, voices hushed. Exactly the sort of tone that would make anyone want to listen closer, if they could.

“You never paid _attention_ in Ferelden,” Merrill told her. And it was true, probably; Hawke had never needed to beyond keeping an eye out for particularly motivated templars. The young ones who hadn’t settled yet, seeing magic in every gust of wind and lantern flare; the older ones still leaving their well-appointed headquarters to roam the countryside, alight with a rage for the Maker. Magic must serve man and not rule over him, the chantry priestesses never tired of saying. Hawke liked to believe people of goodwill understood mages fell under men in that equation and not magic itself. Recent events were not supporting that assumption.

“But they didn’t...just let mages enroll and then throw them to the Chantry the minute they acted like students are supposed to.” Did they? There were fewer mages at Denerim City College, of course, but once you were there you were safe. _She_ had been safe, finally at home in cosmopolitan Denerim where no one ever inquired too closely into the pasts of stolid humans running after dragonlings and deepstalkers. 

Not so, perhaps, for tiny elves whose lifes’ work was studying magical artifacts.

“They did other things,” Merrill said quietly. “You really - you should spend more time with mages. Ones who know how things work here.” She glanced down. “Uh, that loud blond you like so much is having a meeting next week, mage...something. Like the AAUE but mages?”

Hawke had never attended an AAUE meeting and doubted that would change if she suddenly found herself an elf. Dinnertime meetings with no refreshments in inconvenient parts of campus without even the comfort of counting towards university service. “I really don’t -”

“I’ll bring you,” Merrill said. “I want to hear what they’re saying.”

Never able to stand in the way of a determined Merrill, Hawke dutifully added the meeting to her calendar before wandering off.

***

Work continued regardless of campus turmoil. Late morning found Hawke in a coffee shop, papers and laptop competing for table space with a pastry and coffee. It had perhaps been a mistake to use so many short essay assignments the semester all Kirkwall’s cracks started to spread. Something to consider when she updated her syllabus. At least Hawke wasn’t teaching any applied cell biology classes; her own long-ago classmates had been entirely too enthusiastic about the potential benefits of eugenics without current events pulling them back to the idea every class session. Incoherent explanations of disturbance and succession were preferable, really.

She was nearly through the previous week’s papers when someone tried to get her attention.

“Hawke?”

“Oh, Stacia! Hello!”

“Yes, hello.” Stacia hesitated for a moment, hand on the strap of her bag. “Do you - I have a question for you.”

“Of course,” Hawke told her. “Do you want to sit down, or…?”

“This shouldn’t take long,” Stacia said. She took a chair all the same. “It’s about our last trip to the Bone Pit.”

“Yes?” It was such a shame they’d had to abandon the site. Perhaps after hatching season was over they could return, at least study the nest dispersal more closely. If the drakes had been even a touch less territorial they might have tried to watch the hatching…

“I was wondering about how you got us out of there.”

Some conversations were not meant for public consumption. “Yes, well, it’s a useful technique,” Hawke began. “Particularly in tunnels like the Bone Pits. You could practice it the next time we make it to a field site.”

“Really?” The girl smiled like Hawke had promised her a tenure track job within a year of finishing her doctorate.

“Of course. When you’re doing solo field work you’ll find it especially handy. Why, when I was working on my dissertation I found the eagles I was observing were nesting near a pair of harpies - you’d think they would compete for rabbits and the like but not here - you never know when you’ll need to make a quick retreat.”

“Thank you, Hawke. I’ll, uh, stop by your office hours to go over the technique.” Stacia departed.

It was possible, Hawke considered, that Carver had a point about her reckless use of magic. She’d just be careful not to incriminate herself anymore before Stacia did the same. She could hardly spend her whole life pretending to be above approach. That sort of behavior just got people eaten by drakelings. 

That particular concern back down to an insistent murmur, she turned to the last of her essays.

***

The mage meeting was terribly ordinary. A couple of people who knew everything and everyone on campus and could speak eloquently of their failings, circled by quieter voices.

While she knew herself to be a woman of almost offensive talents, Hawke couldn’t pick up on every referenced grievance, not when half of them were only mentioned as “the Alienage kid” or “last fall’s resolution.” She drifted. Merrill feigned attention better, and tapped her hand when discussion moved back to the present.

***

Hawke had every intention of attending the faculty senate meeting, but then - well. The department was suddenly scandalized by the crackle of magic coming from her office (which seemed particularly insincere when a staff leaning against her desk had never caused comment), and Templars took a new interest in loitering outside her classrooms, and immovable scheduling conflicts appeared. 

Half the meeting, she heard, took place in executive session. 

***

“Dr. Hawke,” a young Orlesian woman said as she closed the conference room door. “Thank you for coming to meet with me this morning.”

“Of course.” Hawke’s interview blazer was starting to show its age, but had still seemed like the best way to masquerade as a respectable professional for a meeting at Flemeth & Associates.

“Let me tell you where the suit stands at the moment. Dr. Fel has a compelling case against the university for partnering with the Chantry as a public instition. The possible Title XI violations are a little less clearcut, but with your testimony...”


End file.
